The World Health Organization has just recommended that countries move toward shorter treatment regimens for some people with drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB), including people co-infected with HIV, children, and people with simple MDR-TB who have not been treated before or and have no known resistance to any of the drugs in the regimen. This recommendation comes following results from a number of large observation cohort studies using the shortened regimen.

JOHANNESBURG/HARARE—The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today warned that lifesaving antiretroviral medicines (ARVs) are routinely not making their way to patients in sub-Saharan Africa, most often despite sufficient stocks already being present in countries, and called for urgent improvements in ARV supply chains in the region.

Boston/New York, March 6, 2014—Two new studies released today by Epicentre,the research arm of the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) at CROI, the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, point to reductions in new HIV infections in areas where HIV treatment has been greatly expanded. The studies are some of the first to look at large-scale antiretroviral therapy (ART) rollout in real-world high-HIV-burden settings in sub-Saharan Africa, and its possible impact on reducing new infections.

As the Measles Initiative meets in Washington, D.C., MSF is calling for an effective outbreak response mechanism to be established immediately to deal with the rising numbers of severe outbreaks worldwide.